The Islamabad High Court has frozen Islamabad’s local government elections in an interim order dated 12 November, suspending the Election Commission’s order and the revised polling schedule until 26 November. Polling had been set for 20 December. The Election Commission complied on Friday, 13 November, and put its election programme on hold. No new polling date has been announced.
The freeze turns on a map. The capital’s voter map, 130 union councils under three town corporations, was drawn under a local government ordinance issued in January 2026. That ordinance has since lapsed, and the older Islamabad Capital Territory Local Government Act of 2015 is back in force. The 2015 law provides for one Metropolitan Corporation and 125 union councils, each divided into nine wards. The court must now answer one question: can boundaries drawn under a dead law govern an election under the revived one?
A map drawn under one law, an election under another
The petitioner, Chaudhry Amjad Ali, filed the case under Article 199 of the Constitution. The Election Commission issued a delimitation timetable in December 2024 and an election programme on 26 December 2025, which was later withdrawn. The January 2026 ordinance then changed the structure, introducing three town corporations, removing the nine-ward arrangement and providing for census-block delimitation. The number of union councils rose from 125 to 130. The commission issued revised delimitation timelines on 25 August 2026 and published the final list of 130 union councils on 14 October.
The ordinance then ceased to have effect under Article 89 after one 120-day extension, and lapsed in September. The 2015 Act revived. On 21 October, the commission decided to proceed under the 2015 Act and issued a revised programme: polling on 20 December, nominations until 8 November, scrutiny from 11 to 16 November. The petition argues that the commission never addressed the delimitation of the 125 union councils, their nine wards or the Metropolitan Corporation under that law. The petitioner has asked for fresh delimitation and electoral rolls before any polling, arguing that an election without them would breach Article 218(3) of the Constitution and waste public money.
Five years and nine months without a council
The capital has had no elected local government since the term of the last one expired in February 2021. Section 219(4) of the Elections Act, 2017, requires fresh local government elections within 120 days of a term expiring. That deadline passed in June 2021. The elections have now been postponed at least five times, and the December date was the latest attempt to end a five-year-and-nine-month wait.
The delay is not for want of trying. A programme announced in December 2025 set polling for 15 February 2026 and was then withdrawn. The January ordinance was meant to settle the structure and instead created the dispute now before the court. Each attempt has produced a new map or a new law, and each has produced a new challenge.
The day before, the vote was going ahead
A day before the stay, Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja told an Election Commission hearing that the federal government was trying to sabotage the Islamabad polls and vowed the vote would be held as scheduled. He said the government had ordered teachers not to be assigned election duty, and asked where the commission would bring staff from. The court order came the next day. The commission, which had insisted the programme would stand, complied with the order on Friday and suspended the programme itself.
The capital is also due to go fully cashless by 31 December, with no cash at government counters from 30 November.
What happens on 26 November
The court has not decided the case. Its order is interim relief only, and it has not declared the schedule unlawful, set aside the disputed delimitations or ordered a fresh delimitation. It has asked the Election Commission, the interior and law ministries, the Capital Development Authority and other respondents to reply before the next hearing on 26 November. Three paths then open: the court could accept the 130-council map and let the December date stand, order fresh delimitation under the 2015 Act, which would take months, or the government could legislate a new framework and end the argument that way. The same constitutional procedure is at the centre of the debate over creating twelve new provinces, where a referendum cannot move without Parliament.
Until then, Islamabad stays where it has been since February 2021: a capital with no elected local council, waiting for a court to say which map counts. Parliament backed the emergency and governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa earlier this autumn, when it was drawn into another constitutional question. The Islamabad case will show which of the two settles the next one first.
